The colonial British regime controlled India by using a “divide and rule” policy, inducing alienation between apparently dissimilar social segments. The colonial policy resulted primarily in a horizontal fragmentation of culture, geography and society. In post-colonial times, we seem to be invoking the age-old Indian practice of vertically dividing society, not in the name of pseudo-metaphysics, but in the name of electoral politics. Varna and caste had been the pre-colonial methods of vertical divide and rule. Added to these in the post-colonial times are religion and language as the grounds for a vertical divide. The recent decision of the Union Cabinet to inscribe Bangla, Assamiya and Marathi as classical languages illustrates the method.
“Classical” is not, as is often thought, a linguistic feature of a given language; it is an ex-post-facto historical description. Linguists and historians dealing with the ancient world mainly count Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek and Latin as “classical”. These are mainly the languages that offer root words or affixes to form new words in contemporary languages; for instance, the ancient “er” suffix in a modern word like “computer”, and the ancient Latin “intelligentia” in a modern compound noun like “artificial intelligence”. The term “classical” came to be used in English during the 16th century, to refer to the bygone literary eras of Greek and Latin. It acquired wider currency after John Dryden wrote his celebrated Essay on Dramatic Poesy in 1668, setting the modern against the classical. Since then, other scholars have added different historical phases of Coptic, Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Persian, Tamil, Pali and Syriac to the universally accepted list of classical languages.
The concept “classical” indicates not just the longevity of an ancient language; it is, at the same time, a social class marker. In the context in which Latin was described as “classical”, there was a perception that the non-Latin languages of the Roman Empire were either “barbaric” or “vernaculars”. The term gained currency against the background of the rising international aspirations of France, Prussia and England. The unstated initial logic later became manifest when these European nations started justifying plunder in the name of “civilising” other nations. The stated intent may have been pious, but not so the content imposed. Adjectives are rarely innocent; “classical” is no exception. Were that so, as Indians we would be justified in adding to the universally accepted list of “classical languages” those in India that have not got well-deserved attention. The term “classical” holds within it a long history of discrimination.
Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil are universally accepted by historians as classical languages. These three produced, in ancient times, a wealth of philosophical and literary texts, although Pali was perhaps a language designed to primarily be only textual. As against these, “Prakrit” — as a singular — cannot lay that claim with equal ease. Prakrits were of many hues, being somewhat like a basket of regional languages, such as Gandhari, Maharashtri, Shauraseni, Paishachi and Kamrupi, or wide-spread speech varieties, such as the Apabramshas and Ardhamagadhi. Often, Pali too gets listed among the Prakrits. The term Prakrit denotes an earlier phase of several of India’s modern languages, such as Gujarati, Bangla, Marathi and Odia. It also indicates the last remnants of the pre-Sanskrit languages in use for millennia in the Indian subcontinent. The literary and philosophic production of the Prakrits has been noteworthy, but not as phenomenal as that of Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil. Placing Prakrit in India’s official list of “classical languages” is anomalous and insufficiently justified.
The question is not whether the list is scientifically compiled, but whether such a list should be prepared at all for recognition. As a proven historical fact, there were numerous predecessors of the many languages of India in the millennia before Sanskrit emerged as a major language, soon followed by Tamil. The first Holocene migration to India took place some 9,000 to 8,000 years ago. Human settlements, along with domestication of cattle, around cultivated areas, would have formed the foundation of the villages in India. The ability to acquire language was one of the factors that made prehistoric migrations possible. Though we have neither any written nor oral evidence as to the characteristics of the languages used by the pre-Sanskrit groups in India, it won’t be illogical to assume that they created a profusion of nature-related and agriculture-related terminologies. Most of these subsequently survived in Prakrits which are known as the languages contemporary to Sanskrit. But they were not just a “single” language; they could not have been.
Let me explain why broadening the list of Classical Languages results in a vertical fragmentation of Indian society. During the 1961 Census, Indian people had returned the names of 1,652 “mother tongues”. That figure had sunk to 1,369 in the 2011 Census. Besides these, there were other “mother tongues”, but they were filtered by the Census office. In 2011, the Census office rejected 1,474 such other mother tongues. Of the 1,369 accepted names, the Census positioned 121 as “languages”, a category positioned as “superior” to “mother tongue”. Of these, 22 languages have so far been included in the 8th Schedule of India’s Constitution. Of these, nine are now “classical”: Assamiya, Bangla, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. Pali and the Prakrit(s) are designated “classical” but not included in the 8th Schedule. So the language pyramid in the Indian Republic has over a thousand “mother tongues”, a little over a hundred “languages”, over a score of “scheduled languages” and eleven “classical languages”. The four-fold administrative division of languages, reminiscent of the chatur-varna, has come into being when every passing year dozens of mother tongues are getting closer to extinction. Bolstering majoritarian language pride may be a useful electoral tool; but it is as harmful as dividing people on the lines of religion or caste. Let me repeat what I have so often said: Every language is a unique worldview. Every language deserves respect from its speaker as well as the state. If only some are inscribed for a cosmetic honour, India will soon become, as in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a republic of languages where all are equal but some are more equal. Or, as the Romans would have said, some are classical — all the others are merely plebeian.
The writer is the author of India: A Linguistic Civilization (2024).
